There are a few of us that are recovering from a long drawn out toxic spiritual experience so we have informally dubbed ourselves DeTox Church Group. We aren't a church and don't plan to ever become one--but we do have thoughts and resources to share. Don't forget to check out our list of books and blogs we like.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Still Not Ready to Help at Church

This post mainly speaks of where we are in relation to church stuff 3 years after leaving the old one. We are finding that we are still not ready to jump in and help out at the good church yet, which is sometimes disconcerting, and we are evaluating our reasons for that.

Each one of us who have left the former church could write a book on what occurred there, and needless to say old habits needs to be redone. Our entire way of life needs to be transformed. One of the old habits is attending church just because it's expected of us as Christians, although this is an obligation common to Christians everywhere. We're now learning to listen to the Holy Spirit and only go when it's in our spirits to go which may seem weird to those who haven't endured the teaching that attending church on Sunday is tied to the depth of one's spirituality. Hopefully in re-doing this, we will establish a more healthy habit of approaching the Lord whether in prayer or in attending church. The bleak alternative is to be like robotrons reporting for duty. If we were machines it'd be different, but 'last time we checked' we are still human.

Unfortunately, we have the rhetoric memorized about why we are supposed to force ourselves to do stuff when our hearts are not in it -- how it's dying to self and becoming more like Christ out of sacrifice. Although dying to self is one of the principals of a Spirit-led life, at Cult Church it was twisted and used to subtley control us especially when we began to ignore red flags and allowed the leadership to cross our boundaries. Why did the leaders have no problem with crossing our boundaries?? Equally as important, why did we let them?

Obligation was one of the Church's greatest tools in getting people to attend all the meetings about doing all the work. Even if individuals weren't well suited for the job, we were taught to teach them to ignore their inner misgivings and call it dying to self. If that aroused feelings of frustration or anger it meant he/she wasn't dead enough yet. I guess that's one way to delegate all the work dreamed up by leaders with endless ideas.

Obligation was also a great tool for generating tithes and offerings: Teach people every week in a 15-min sermonette before the offering to give in faith especially directing it at those who have money, but also reminding the ones who had a 'widow's mite' how they should give all they have to the church, -- I mean, to the Lord. Dying to self for the greater good of the church was essential --you were decreasing and Christ was increasing--or at least, the church itself was increasing. Or was that the senior Pastor's Family Lifestyle that was increasing?? Maybe they should have just implemented mandatory tithe like the Mormons and be done with it. It'd save them alot of preachy energy expended.

The more reticent of us are not getting involved in our new church yet because of all the crap we endured at the Controlling Church and because we couldn't bear to go through it again. We've decided it's best for now to 'hide behind the pillars'! We have no desire to be seen or heard by leaders. In fact, we tend to go the other way if we see them.

Yet, we aren't waiting for perfect forgiveness to jump back in either. We do understand that God uses us even while on the mend. But, could it be that we aren't designed to be inside the church and so we shouldn't gage our health on whether we want to help out at church or not. Perhaps we will find our path of 'ministry' (or let's just call it 'helping others') outside the church walls. If we use our energy for what we aren't supposed to do, there won't be energy left to do what we are to do.

Truth to tell, there are a lot of people like us out there -- we've been reading books and blogs and there are entire communities of us with similar disorders as a result of spiritual abuse . A lot of what we are reading indicates that, for the most part, these people still love Jesus but can't stomach the church any longer (even the good ones like ours) and that's mainly because there are religious Christians lurking in churches ready to pounce, even if the pastor and staff are cool and discerning.

4 comments:

Thanks for that post. I just discovered your blog this week and have linked it to my blog. I have been "chilling" from church involvement for a few years now. I too used to hear a bunch of exhortations about "dying to self" and sacrifice for the greater good at my old abusive church. Unfortunately, the twisting of that sort of teaching seems to be rampant in modern evangelicalism.